Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, January 14, 2021

Official Report 594KB pdf

Scottish Government Reports

Agenda item 2 is consideration of written biannual updates from the Scottish Government in relation to a range of European Union issues—namely, the one-plus-two languages policy, horizon 2020, and the European social fund and European regional development fund. Members have a copy of the updates in their meeting papers.

Do members have any questions or issues that they wish to raise with regard to the papers? If so, please type an R in the chat box and I will bring you in.

The reports are helpful. I have a couple of follow-up points about the report on the one-plus-two languages policy, which is an issue that the Education and Skills Committee takes an interest in, too. It might be worth writing to the Government to ask about the reduction in teachers. One of the tables in the report shows that there has been a slight increase in Spanish teachers but a reduction in German and French teachers. Could we ask for more details about the workforce? It is an ambitious programme that is intended to deliver more language teaching, and a reduction in teacher numbers might make that more challenging.

I also want to ask about the figures on those who sat exams. The report points out that there were changes to last year’s exam programme. The Government has told us what numbers presented for languages, but I am interested in what percentage that is of the overall number of pupils presenting for exams. In other words, has the number of pupils who present for languages decreased as a proportion of the overall number? I do not think that the Government has given us that figure.

That is fair enough. Those are points of clarification, which is fine.

The table on page 18 of the report on the languages policy shows that the number of language teachers has decreased by 5.7 per cent since 2013. As Claire Baker pointed out, the number of French and German teachers has declined significantly. It is interesting that we have Italian as a separate entry, with only 11 teachers, but in the category of “Other Modern Languages”, there are 396 teachers, which has grown substantially from 276—the figure has gone from about one in five to about 30 per cent of all language teachers. However, that information is not broken down, so we cannot see what those languages are. It would be helpful to see the direction of travel on the additional languages that are being taught in Scotland.

I also have a wee query about page 14, where, at the bottom, in describing the main results of a survey, curiously, it says that

“70% of secondary schools are providing the full L2 entitlement from S1 to S3”,

but it goes on to say that

“83% of secondary schools are providing the full L3 entitlement from S1 to S3.”

That does not seem to me to be right. More schools seem to be providing L3 in total than are providing L2. One would expect the situation to be similar to that in primary schools, where 88 per cent are providing full L2 and only 48 per cent are providing full L3. I just wonder whether there is a wee error in that.

I was also going to make the point that Claire Baker made that the figures on the number of young people sitting language exams and passing them do not show us the context unless we know how many people sat exams in those years and what the share was. Basically, we want to be able to see how languages are doing relative to other subjects. It would be helpful if we had that information.

Are members content for the clerks to compose a letter to the Government on the points that Claire Baker and Kenneth Gibson have raised and for me and Claire to sign off the letter?

I think that everyone is content with that.

That concludes the public part of the meeting.